We read this story this morning and have been trying to figure out the possible suspects. But the part of the story that was shocking was this quote:

The FDA hasn’t confirmed the identity of that company, but its Web site suggests it supplies only animal feed manufacturers, Sundlof said.

What other animal feed contains this wheat gluten?

Also, we have some insight into what may cause acute renal failure from a veterinary toxicology’s perspective as reported by a veterinary technical student. Itchmo has read about the antifreeze possibility on Friday, but we didn’t report it since we had no training to confirm or deny the report. We’ll keep looking. We would love to read the report for ourselves. The report is pointing to three likely causes:

Contamination with Glycols, such as Ethylene Glycol (antifreeze) and Diglycol Ether.

Mycotoxin contamination, specifically Ochratoxins and Citrinin. These can both cause nephrotoxicity.

Contamination with industrial chemicals like phenols or toluene is another possibility, but it would have likely made the contaminated foods unpalatable.

With these two others as possible, but less likely:

Vitamin D excess. This was a problem for Royal Canin and their Urinary SO formula last year, but it seems unlikely in this case because it can take months for the symptoms to appear.

Heavy metal contamination, like Mercury or Arsenic. The doctor didnâ€™t think this was likely, because the clinical signs would be very obvious.

Hello, and thanks for all the traffic :) I’ll happily send you the report I was given regarding the veterinary toxicologist’s suggested causes of the pet food problems. Let me scan it, and I’ll email it to you as a file attachment later this evening.

just to comment on the mycotoxins: you may not have heard of this issue here in north america because we have pretty good food supply controls, but this is a huge problem worldwide. it’s not uncommon for farm animals esp in developing countries to drop dead in large numbers due to wheat / grains contaminated from mycotoxins. mycotoxins are produced by naturally occurring fungi, and these fungi can be difficult to control. bad feed is a recurring and difficult to solve problem for most of the world.